SEATTLE — Maybe the White Sox can appeal to the Commissioner that games that end after midnight central time shouldn’t count.

A ninth-inning Guillermo Heredia pinch-hit single off reliever Dan Jennings scored Jarrod Dyson from second, and the Sox suffered their fourth-straight loss 5-4 in the fourth game of their increasingly troubled west coast swing. The White Sox (17-22) have lost 10 of their last 12 games and are a half-game out of last place in the AL Central.

“Danny threw a good pitch, the guy hit a blooper,” White Sox third baseman Todd Frazier said. “In this game, sometimes you don’t need a good swing. You’ve seen that from me. Sometimes it happens, and that’s baseball. They came back and beat us.”

While the result was bad, there was more proof of the “Ricky’s boys just don’t quit” axiom, as three home runs off the Mariners bullpen tied the game 4-4 in the eighth. Five scoreless innings for first-time major league starter Sam Gaviglio and more fifth-inning nightmares for Dylan Covey looked like it would lead to an easy Mariners victory as they took a four-run lead into the seventh.

A three-run Jean Segura surface-to-air missile launch of a hanging slider in the fifth launched the Mariners out to a 4-0 lead, as Covey failed to recover from the sting of a two-out, full count walk on a Carlos Ruiz check swing.

“That was something me and Coop [pitching coach Don Cooper] talked about,” Covey said. “Didn’t want to walk [Ruiz] to get to Segura. Tried throwing a fastball 3-2 and spiked it. If I could have an at-bat back, that would be it, just go right after him. But I felt decent overall.”

At least the home run meant that the two Dyson stolen bases that inning were meaningless, but it had already been preceded by the speedy center fielder’s low liner clearing the right field wall for a solo shot in the third. A leaping Melky Cabrera catch at the wall robbed Danny Valencia of yet another Mariners home run to end the fourth.

But then the dingers came. Matt Davidson caught a hold of a flat changeup from low-3/4 right-hander Casey Lawrence in the seventh and lifted way high enough and just far enough for a two-run shot to cut the lead in half, giving him his third home run from an otherwise rough month of May. After a pair of lineouts gave reliever Dan Altavilla an ominous opening to the top of the eighth, Frazier made it full-on dreadful by scooping and launching a hanging slider out to left for a solo shot, and Tim Anderson made it a duet by pounding a 3-2 fastball out to the opposite field to tie it up. That's four home runs apiece for the locker neighbors this season.

“He had blown [a fastball] right before that, right past me,” Anderson said. “And I knew he was going back with a heater.”

The good

–Avisail Garcia continues to drive the ball with authority to right field. His fourth inning triple — his third of the season — was just a low line drive powered by his raw strength past the Mariners outfield. He collected another infield single and has struck just once in his last 30 plate appearances.

–For my money, Anderson still doesn’t look precisely in sync, but maybe we’ll hold off that discussion for a day where he doesn’t finish a triple short of the cycle, steal a base and make two leaping catches on line drives at short.

–Frazier has a long way to go to get his numbers back to his normal standards, but a double and a home run is a quick way to get there.

–After back-to-back outings with a home run allowed, Tommy Kahnle held the tie with two strikeouts in a scoreless eighth.

Not quite as good

–What happened to all the cool strikeout stuff? After striking out a career-high nine in his last start, Covey was back to sitting 92-93 mph and leaning on some slower versions of his breaking pitches. Segura’s blast came on a hanging slider, and Dyson turned on a center-cut 90 mph fastball, and Covey’s only strikeout of the night didn’t come until the fifth inning.

“I was able to get some early outs and keep the pitch count down,” Covey said, “I kind of got away from my fastball a bit I think in the middle innings and the off-speed kind of lost some sharpness. Felt good. Was able to keep the ball down for the most part. Got some ground balls.”

–Leury Garcia left the game after being hit by a pitch in the right elbow in the fifth inning. He’s day-to-day with a bruise.

“He bruised it up so in the end we took him out because he was feeling a little difficulty moving his arm,” White Sox manager Rick Renteria said, “We'll check on him but he should be fine.”

–Gaviglio, a 26-year-old right-handed sinker/slider type who sat 88-90 mph, had all of two innings of major league experience coming into the night for the injury-besieged Seattle pitching staff. But left behind nothing more than fly outs, line outs and extra-base hits with the bases empty and two outs in his wake, as the Sox stranded runners in scoring position in the last four of his five scoreless innings.

–Someone appeared to throw a tennis ball onto the field as Anderson reached home plate after his home run.

–Jennings has allowed seven earned runs in 3 2/3 innings this month

Takeaways

Figuring out where Covey is with his game after this start is kind of a wash, and hints of Anderson and Frazier coming out of their frigid and personally difficult Aprils range a few ticks more significant on the organizational future scale. Avisail Garcia continues to make loud contact and not strike out, and looks like a future All-Star representative (maybe), so we can continue to wait and see when the Rule 5 pick will settle on what his arsenal and approach will look like.

Notables

–The two starters Thursday night entered the game with 31 1/3 innings of major league experience.

–Frazier is 1/3 of the way to his 2016 doubles total. He has seven, last season he had 21.

–Anderson is 3-for-3 on stolen bases this season.

–Sanchez extended his hitting streak to nine games.

Looking ahead

The White Sox continue their run of start times after 9 p.m. CT with a Friday night tilt in Seattle. Staff ace Jose Quintana will face Mariners ace of the moment Ariel Miranda.

James Fegan is the lead writer on the White Sox for The Athletic Chicago. Previously, James founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of BP South Side, and his work has appeared in Baseball Prospectus, ESPN SweetSpot, The Rock River Times and Athlete's Quarterly. Follow James on Twitter @JRFegan.